Welcome to Aya’s documentation!

Aya is a terse stack based programming language originally intended for code golf and programming puzzles. The original design was heavily inspired by CJam and GolfScript. Currently, Aya is much more than a golfing language as it supports user-defined types, key-value pair dictionaries, natural variable scoping rules, and many other things which allow for more complex programs and data structures than other stack based languages.

Aya comes with a standard library written entirely in Aya code. The standard library features types such as matrices, sets, dates, colors and more. It also features hundreds of functions for working working on numerical computations, strings, plotting and file I/O. It even features a basic turtle library for creating drawings in the plot window.

Aya also features a minimal GUI that interfaces with Aya’s stdin and stdout. The GUI features plotting, tab-completion for special characters, and an interactive way to search QuickSearch help data.

Check out the Tour of Aya section for further information.

Note

This project is under active development.

Contents

• Tour of Aya
  • Basic language features
• Running / Installation
  • Running Examples
  • Command Line Arguments
  • System Install
• Syntax Overview
  • Execution
  • Comments
    • Line Comments
    • Block Comments
  • Variables
    • Special Variables
  • Numbers
    • Integers & Decimals
    • Negative Numbers
    • Big Numbers
    • Hexadecimal Literals
    • Binary Literals
    • Scientific/“e” Notation
    • Fractional Numbers
    • PI Times
    • Root Constants
    • Complex numbers
    • Number Constants
  • Characters
    • Standard Characters
    • Hex Character Literals
    • Named Character Literals
  • Strings
    • Standard String Literals
    • Special Characters in Strings
    • String Interpolation
    • Long String Literals
  • Symbols
  • Lists
    • List Literals
    • List Stack Captures
    • List Comprehensions
    • Indexing
      • Get a value from a list
      • Set a value at an index in a list
  • Dictionaries
    • Dictionary Literals
    • Getting Values
    • Setting Values
  • Blocks
    • Basic Blocks
    • Short Block Notation
    • Block Headers
      • Arguments
      • Local Variables
  • Operators
    • Standard Operators
    • “Dot” Operators
      • Exceptions
      • Dereference Without Executing (.<grave>)
    • “Colon” Operators
      • Exceptions
    • “Misc” Operators
    • Non-Standard “Infix” Stack Operators
      • List Map (:#)
      • List Map Shorthand (#)
      • Capture Instructions (:`)
    • Extension Operators
  • User Types
    • Struct
      • Defining A Struct
      • Create Instance Of Struct
      • Accessing Values of a Struct
      • Struct Member Functions
  • Golf Utilities
    • Golf Constants
• Operators
  • Type Abbreviations
  • Operator Table
• Numbers
  • Special Number Literals
  • Misc. Number Literals
    • Scientific Notation
    • PI Times
    • Root Constants
• Lists
  • Essential List Operations
    • List Indexing
    • Essential List Operators
      • Extend (K)
      • Join (J)
      • Reshape (L)
      • Flatten (.F)
      • Pop from front / back
      • Append to front / back
    • Generators
      • Range (R)
  • List comprehension
  • The Broadcast Operator
• Characters
  • Special Characters
    • Hex character literals
    • Named Characters
• Strings
  • String Interpolation
  • Long String Literals
• Blocks
  • Block Header
  • Arguments
  • Argument Type Assertions
  • Local Declarations
  • Keyword Arguments
• Functions
• Dictionaries
  • Accessing Values
  • Assigning / Creating Values
  • Metatables
• Variables
  • Variable Scope
• User-Defined Types
  • Classes
    • Constructor
    • Functions
    • Print/String Overloading
    • Operator Overloading
    • Class Variables & Functions
    • Inheritance
  • Structs
  • Internals
    • Special Metatable Variables
    • Constructor
• Metaprogramming
  • Blocks
  • Macros
    • Macro Example
• Standard library
  • asciiart
  • bitset
  • canvas
  • color
  • csv
  • dataframe
  • date
  • enum
  • golf
  • image
  • io
  • json
  • math
  • matrix
  • missing
  • mp
  • plot
  • queue
  • random
  • set
  • shell
  • socket
  • stack
  • stats
  • sys
  • terminal
  • turtle
  • viewmat
• Canvas Input
  • Mouse Events
    • Click Events
    • Pressed Buttons
    • Move Events
  • Keyboard Events
    • Pressed Keys
    • Typed Characters
  • Overview of possible values
    • Mouse Buttons
    • Keyboard Keys
    • Keyboard Locations
• Debugging

Aya has its documentation hosted on Read the Docs.